Last year, the third Sunday in September was spent at the Hovis Freewheel bike event in Central London. This year I thought i would do exactly the same.
The whole concept of Freewheel is to promote greener living, getting out your cars and cycling for the day.
All the roads in Central London, mainly by the River Thames have been closed off for approximately 7 hours so budding cyclists, students, adults, kids and granny's alike, can dust off their bikes and join in the fun.
Now, i don't even own a bike so it's always a case of sourcing one right in time for the event. Sometimes actually on the day.
This year my first lead fell through, so it was up to our trusty friend Paul aka the bike collector to supply me with a bike for the days fun. I was a bit weary of borrowing one from him as he owns some seriously heavyweight bikes, some metal plated and giant sized choppers. I didn't think i'd be able to lift a bike up let alone ride it around central London all day. Luckily he lended me his Schwinn. It had to be the coolest bike i'd ever seen.With a green and white body, pink handle bars, a quirky horn and really light body work, it was most definitely a bike designed for me.
We all met outside Paul's pad in East London and carefully (it has been a year since i last cycled) made our way to the course at the Tower Hill end of the route.
There were a total of 49 thousand cyclists taking to the streets for the event and boy did some of the coolest characters come out for the day. We saw Victorian cyclists, uni cyclists, cyclist drummers, custom bike cyclists, ballerina cyclists. You name it, we saw it.
This years event was sponsored by Sky Sports and was much better organised, though lacking the free sandwiches that Hovis provided in 2007.
We even got a glimpse of the Olympic heroes Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton cycling around the perimeter of St James' Park.
The course took us down Tower Hill passed the Towers of London, up The Embankment, around Trafalgar Square and up the Mall.
We spent at least three hours on the coruse, riding around until they re-opened the roads at 5pm.
It was a brilliant day out and i will definitely be back next year.
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